New Mexico authorities have released the names of those killed earlier this month in connection with a deadly multi-vehicle accident along I-25 that involved a Texas-bound tour bus.
The victims were Mexican, but had been living in Colorado:
- Maria Delosangeles Almanza, 65
- Olga Hernandes de Grajeda, 58
- Maria Dolores Orrantia Camacho, 70
All 3 were passengers aboard an El Paso-Los Angeles Limousine Express bus that had been travelling from Denver, Colorado to El Paso, Texas when it crashed shortly before 2:00 a.m. on July 15th.
New Crash Details Emerge
Initially, authorities had wrongly identified the driver of another vehicle as among the dead.
“That was part of the chaos,” Sandoval County Sheriff’s Lt. Keith Elder said during a July 20th News conference. “There was some question to what was going on and all I could do was to report back to the media what I was told at the scene.”
Lt. Elder also clarified the sequence of events that led to the accident, which began when a Honda sedan driven by Phuong Truong, 26, of Albuquerque, rear-ended a Toyota pickup truck as the vehicles were travelling south on I-25, near mile-marker 244.
The tour bus approached the scene of the initial accident moments later and collided with the Honda, which was disabled on the highway.
The bus rolled over on its side, skidding over the median and into the northbound lanes of the interstate. The vehicle was then hit by an oncoming Acura just before a northbound 18-wheeler collided with the bus.
911 Calls Shed Light on Accident’s Chaotic Aftermath
Recordings of 911 and dispatch calls have helped shed light on the accident’s chaotic aftermath.
The driver of the Toyota pickup was one of the first to report the crash.
“Hey, slow down! Slow down! Slow down!” he yells while on the phone with a dispatcher following the initial crash. “Get somebody out here in a hurry. Traffic is coming in real fast.”
“Oh my God. You hear that? There are more accidents,” he reported just moments later.
“There’s children bleeding, there’s people unconscious,” a female caller later tells another dispatcher. “They’re pulling them out of the bus right now. The bus flipped over.”
1 Bus Passenger, Honda Driver Remain Hospitalized
30 people – including 28 bus passengers – were hurt in the accident.
Truong was ejected from his Honda and remains hospitalized under heavy sedation.
An unidentified bus passenger was still in the hospital as of Friday.
Many of those injured in the crash suffered broken bones, head lacerations, and internal injuries.
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